This doesn’t follow. Below some level of skill and experience they can contribute negative value to the project. Companies need a minimum level of experience just to make the role pay for itself.

Does the high skill standard for surgeons mean the market for surgeons is saturated?

If you are not needing to consider having someone who does not meet a certain skill standard to perform surgery on you, then, yes, it would seem that the surgeon market is saturated as the parent describes it.

It depends on the time scale you are looking at it with. It looks saturated short-term, but it surely is not long term. The problem will only show up once your surgeons start retiring.

Instantaneous time is the only time scale that makes sense with respect to the topic at hand.

Sure, it is possible for the market to desaturate at some point as key people leave. But at that point, assuming suitable, per the earlier comment, replacements don't fill the void, the market will either come to accept lesser skilled people or it will come to accept fewer surgeries, returning to equilibrium. Not exactly magic.

...this doesn't make sense. Surely you need to factor in price point. Often times junior engineers deliver disproportionate value. Some ratio of juniors:seniors just seems rational, and those juniors grow into seniors.

Maybe there's a good argument against training, but it could also just be irrational and stubborn in this case.

In my experience it only works if you pull in juniors into strong teams and keep the proportion of juniors reasonably small. You also need to have a process in place for training them - it’s not enough to rely on ad-hoc mentoring from peers.

If you get the ratio wrong, with too many juniors and weak technical leadership then you will end up in a very bad place in your code base.

In terms of value, even if juniors are half the cost, it is much wiser to hire one senior instead of 2 juniors for the same money.

> it is much wiser to hire one senior instead of 2 juniors for the same money.

Maybe in terms of pure productivity, but if you can match hiring to roadmaps you can give them more approachable/further from revenue work for which seniors would be an overkill. Etc. I'm just saying anyone with a simple explanation is only telling you part of the story.

Besides, hiring is expensive. If you say live near a university, you have an edge in finding talent.

> give them more approachable/further from revenue work for which seniors would be an overkill

My experience suggests there is no such thing. There is work that seniors might not want to do, but if you hired well then they will be professional enough to do it, if it really needs to be done. And it takes some experience to determine which “non-revenue generating” work (e.g. tech debt) actually needs to be done, to advocate doing it to the stakeholders and to actually do it well.

Juniors need a lot of supervision and that is not free. Which is not a reason not hire them in the first place, just that that it should be done mindfully.

>which “non-revenue generating” work (e.g. tech debt) actually needs to be done

This mentality is part of the problem. You can't fundamentally treat juniors as a profit center. Especially in more niche fields. They need to be trained and schools don't cover your specific pipeline.

maybe it doesn't "need" to be done, but some refactoring work will pay off to turn your juniors today into seniors tomorrow. If you can only think in productivity charts, then you don't hire juniors.